Joseph and His Brothers Page 7

  It is in this narcissistic image so full of tragic charm that the tradition begins to achieve some refinement of meaning. This refinement occurs at that moment when the descent of the divine child out of his world of light and into nature ceases to be a matter of pure obedience to a higher injunction—and thus innocent—and gains instead the stamp of an independent and voluntary act of longing— that is, of guilt. At the same time we begin to understand the puzzling meaning of that "second emissary," who, being identical

  with the man of Hght in a higher sense, has come to free him from his ever-growing entanglement in darkness and to lead him home again. For here the doctrine proceeds to divide the world into the three personal elements of matter, soul, and spirit, out of whose interaction with one another and the Godhead there unfolds the romance that has as its true hero the adventurous soul of man—so creative in its adventures—and that, as a complete myth uniting knowledge of the beginning with a prophecy of last things, provides clear information as to the true location of Paradise and the story of the Fall.

  It is stated that the soul—that is, the primal human state—was, like matter, one of the principles ordained from the beginning, possessing life, but not knowledge. Indeed, it had so little knowledge that, dwelling in proximity to God in a lofty world of peace and happiness, it let itself be agitated and confused by its inclination—in the literal sense of moving in a direction—toward formless matter, became eager to mix with matter, and to generate out of it those forms by which it could achieve physical desires. But even after the soul had let itself be seduced to descend from its home, the desire and pain of its passion did not abate, but instead became so strong that it was pure torment—due to the fact that matter, being indolent and stubborn, wanted nothing more than to remain in its primal formless state, did not wish to know anything whatever about taking on form merely to please the soul, and offered every conceivable resistance to being formed into any shape. And here God intervened, for surely He found that, given this state of affairs, He had no choice but to assist the soul, which, though errant, was His concomitant. To support it in its amorous struggle with obstinate matter, He created the world; that is to say: as a means of assisting the primal human state, He generated within it soHd, long-lived forms, thus enabling the soul to gratify its physical desires on these forms and generate human beings. Immediately thereafter, however, and pursuant to a loftily considered plan. He did something else. He sent into the world and to man—and these are the very words of the source upon which we are drawing—the spirit taken from the substance of His own divinity and intended to awaken the soul from its sleep within the shell of man, so that it might show the soul that, by the will of the Father, this world was not its abode and that its sensual enterprise in passion had been a sin—and that the creation of the world

  should be regarded as that sin's consequence. In truth, the spirit is forever admonishing the human soul imprisoned in matter, is steadfastly trying to make clear to it that the formation of the world is the result of its having foolishly mingled with matter and that, if it were to separate itself from matter, the world of forms would immediately be bereft of existence. It is therefore the duty of the spirit to awaken the soul to this insight; it is its hope and the goal of its pursuit to impart knowledge of this entire state of affairs to the passionate soul, so that the latter will finally recognize its home in the world above, drive out every thought of this lower world, and strive to return to the sphere of peace and happiness in order to regain its home there. The moment that occurs, this lower world will render itself null and void; matter will regain its indolent stubborn will, will be freed from its union with form, be left to enjoy the same formlessness it knew at the beginning of eternity, and so be happy once again in its own fashion.

  That, then, is the doctrine and romance of the soul. There can be no doubt we have arrived at the final step "backward," have gained man's loftiest past, defined Paradise, and traced the story of the Fall, of knowledge and of death, back to its pure and truthful form. The soul of the primal man is the oldest of things or, more precisely, an oldest of things—for it was always there, before time and form, just as God was always there, and matter, too. As for the spirit, in which we recognize that "second emissary" appointed to bring the soul home, it is in some indefinite sense closely akin to the former, but is not that same self yet again, for it is younger, an emanation of God to instruct and liberate the soul, rendering the world of forms null and void in the process. And if in certain phrases of this doctrine the claim or allegorical hint is made for a higher unity of soul and spirit, there is nonetheless a good reason behind it—that good reason is not exhausted, however, in an awareness that the primal man's soul was originally a warrior for God against evil and that this assigned role is related to the one that later devolved upon the spirit as the emissary sent to liberate the soul. In fact, the doctrine fails to provide an explanation for its reasoning because it has not yet arrived at a full development of the role that the spirit plays in the romance of the soul and thus clearly requires supplementation in this regard.

  In this world of forms and of death, conceived in the nuptial recognition of soul and matter, the spirit's mission is unequivocally

  and clearly outlined. Its divine charge is to awaken in the soul—still entangled in form and death—the memory of its higher origin, to convince it that its having become involved with matter was a blunder that gave rise to the world, and finally to strengthen its sense of homesickness until it one day frees itself totally from pain and carnal desire and floats homeward—and with that, the end of the world would be instantly achieved, matter given its old freedom back, and death removed from the world. But just as it can happen that an ambassador, who is sent from one kingdom to another hostile realm and remains there for a long time, can become corrupted in terms of his own country's welfare, and in settling in and adapting can— without ever noticing it himself—take on the color of thought, slide into the self-interested standpoint of the enemy nation, so that he becomes unfit for representing the interests of his homeland and has to be called back, the same thing or something very like it happens to the spirit in the course of its mission. The longer its assignment takes and the longer the spirit remains at its diplomatic post here below, the more obvious the inner flaw, analogous to that ambassador's corruption, in its activity becomes, until the rupture can hardly remain hidden from the higher sphere and must lead, one can only surmise, to its recall—if, that is, the question of a practical replacement were more easily solved than it apparently is.

  There can be no doubt that as time goes by the spirit finds itself increasingly troubled by its role as the world's destroyer and gravedigger. Colored by the duration of its stay, the spirit's viewpoint changes to such an extent that, though it perceives itself as having been sent to remove death from the world, it learns to regard itself as just the opposite, as the deadly principle, as that which brings death upon the world. That is indeed a question of viewpoint and perception—one can judge the matter now one way, now another. Except that one should know the appropriate mode of thought to which one is inherently duty-bound, otherwise precisely the phenomenon we straightforwardly called corruption will take root, and one will estrange oneself from one's natural tasks. A certain weakness in the spirit's character becomes evident here, inasmuch as it has difficulty bearing up under its reputation as the deadly principle intent on destroying all forms—a reputation, moreover, that it largely brought upon itself, given its own nature and its own judgmental impulses, including those directed against itself—

  and makes it a point of honor to be rid of that reputation. Not that it dehberately sets out to betray its own mission; but against its best intentions and under the coercion of both that impulse and an inner agitation that might be termed an ilHcit infatuation with the soul and its passionate ways, words get twisted around in its mouth until they come out sounding like flattery of the soul and its enterprise and, with a kind of tendentious wit directed a
gainst the spirit's pure goals, speak out in favor of life and forms. Whether, to be sure, such traitorous or near-traitorous behavior is of any use to the spirit; whether, in any case, it cannot avoid, even by these means, serving the purpose for which it is sent (that is, to render the material world null and void by freeing the soul from it); and whether it does not know all this perfectly well itself and only acts in this way out of an ultimate certainty that it can allow itself to do so—such questions must remain open. In any case, in this witty and self-abnegating union of its own will with that of the soul, one can spot the explanation behind the allegorical turn the doctrine takes in saying that the "second emissary" is another self of that man of light sent to do battle with evil. Indeed, it is possible that hidden within this maneuver is a prophetic allusion to secret counsels of God that the doctrine considers too holy and impenetrable to be spoken straight out.

  But when all this is regarded calmly, to speak of a "Fall" into sin by the soul or the primal man of light is possible only as starkly moralistic overstatement. At most the soul sinned against itself—by foolishly sacrificing its original peaceful and happy state—but not against God, not by disobeying any prohibition that He might have set down against its passionate behavior. Such a prohibition was never issued—at least not according to the doctrine we have adopted. If nevertheless pious tradition reports such a thing—that is, a divine prohibition against the first human beings' eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of "Good and Evil"—one must first bear in mind that we are dealing here with a secondary and already earthly event and with human beings, who with God's own creative assistance had arisen out of the soul's knowledge of matter; and if God really did put them to this test, there can be no doubt whatever that He knew

  what the result would be beforehand, and the only obscure issue is why, by setting forth a prohibition that was certain not to be observed, He chose not to avoid arousing the schadenfreude of the angelic entourage, given its already very unfavorable opinion of humankind. Second of all, since the phrase "good and evil" is v/ith-out any doubt an acknowledged gloss and addition to the pure text and that, in fact, the issue was one of knowledge per se, resulting not in the moral ability to distinguish between good and evil, but rather in death itself, there is nothing to stand in the way of our declaring the information about the "prohibition" itself to be a well-intended but inappropriate addendum of the same sort.

  Everything speaks in favor of this view, but principally the fact that God was not angered by the soul's acting upon its yearnings, did not cast it out or inflict any punishment that might have gone beyond the measure of suffering that it voluntarily drew upon itself, while, to be sure, also finding compensation in desire. Instead, it is clear that upon beholding the soul's passion, He was touched, if not by sympathy, then by pity; for immediately and unbidden He came to its aid, personally intervened in its loving struggle to know matter by allowing death's world of forms to issue from it, so that the soul could then satisfy its desire in them—conduct on God's part in which it is indeed very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between sympathy and pity.

  To speak in this connection, then, of sin in the sense of an offense against God and His explicit will is relevant only in part, especially when one includes God's peculiar zeal in His relations with the race that arose from the mixing of the soul and matter, with human beings who unquestionably and for good reason were an object of the angels' jealousy from the start. It made a deep impression on Joseph when old EHezer told him of these relationships, speaking of them along the lines of what we can read even today in Hebrew commentaries on the stories of the beginning. If God had not remained silent, they say, wisely keeping to Himself the fact that out of humankind would arise not only just but also evil things, permission for the creation of human beings would not even have been granted by the Realm of Sternness. Such a term gives us important insight into the relationships involved. Above all, it instructs us that "sternness" is a concern not only of God, but indeed of His entourage as well—on whom He appears to be dependent in some (though of course in no

  way decisive) degree, since out of worry that there might be some difficulty from that side He decided to neglect to tell them the plain truth about what was in store, announcing some things, but keeping mum about others. But does this not indicate all the more that He was interested in the creation of the world rather than that He was opposed to it? So that if God might not exactly have enjoined and encouraged the soul in its enterprise—it certainly did not act against His intention, but rather only against that of the angels, whose less than friendly attitude toward humankind is, to be sure, an a priori certainty. To them God's creation of a living world of good and evil and His concern for it seem some sort of majestic whim that nettles them, for they assume—probably more rightly than wrongly—that behind it lay a weariness with their psalm-singing purity. Constantly hovering about their lips are amazed and reproachful questions like: "What is man, O Lord, that You are mindful of him?" And God's replies are indulgent, soothing, evasive, sometimes even annoyed— and definitely humiliating to them. There is certainly no easy explanation for the downfall of Sammael, one of the great princes among the angels, for he possessed twelve pairs of wings whereas the holy beasts and the seraphim each had only six, but—as was evident from Eliezer's lessons, to which Joseph listened with great attentiveness— its immediate cause must be traced to these conflicts. It had been Sammael in particular who had fanned the fires of the angels' sensitivity toward human beings or, better, toward God's concern for them; and on that day when God demanded that His hosts bow down before Adam because of his reason and because he knew how to give names to all things, though all the others obeyed the order, some smiling covert smiles and some with knitted brows, Sammael did not. For with savage candor he declared it absurd that those created from the effulgence of glory should sink down before something made of dust and earth—and it was on that occasion that he was overthrown, which, according to Eliezer's description, had from a distance looked like the falling of a star. But the shock of it must have remained with the other angels forever; and if ever since they have exercised the greatest caution when it comes to humankind, it nevertheless remains manifestly clear that sin's rampant spread over the earth, as for instance before the Flood and at Sodom and Gomorrah, is a regular cause for triumph among the holy entourage and of embarrassment for the Creator, who is then forced to wreak

  dreadful havoc—less out of His own sense of the matter than under the pressure of heaven. But if this presentation of things is correct, what then is the task of the "second emissary," of the spirit, and has it truly been sent to render the material world null and void by separating the soul from it and leading it home?

  A possible supposition is that this is not God's intention and that in fact the spirit was not, as its reputation would have it, sent after the soul to play gravedigger for the world of forms created by the soul with God's gracious assistance. It is perhaps another mystery, and one perhaps based in the doctrine's contention that the second emissary was once again the first man of light sent to do battle with evil. We have long known that mystery uses time's tenses freely and may very well speak in the past when it means the future. It is possible that in saying that soul and spirit were once one, the actual intention is to say that they will be one at some point. Yes, this appears all the more plausible since the spirit represents in and of itself the principle of the future, the "It will be," the "It shall be," whereas the piety of the soul, which is bound up in forms, refers to the past and to the sacred "It was." It remains debatable just where life and death are to be found here, since both parts (the soul woven into nature and the spirit external to the world, one the principle of the past and the other of the future) claim, each in its own way, to be the water of life and each accuses the other of being on death's side—and neither unfairly, since nature without spirit, just as spirit without nature, can scarcely be called life. But the mystery—and God's quiet hope—Hes perhaps
in their union, that is in the spirit's genuinely entering into the world of the soul, in the mutual penetration of both principles, and in the hallowing of the one through the other, thus actualizing in the present a humanity that would be blessed with blessings of heaven above and blessings of the deep that lies below.